


category 3

by cars



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Angst, M/M, kinda unrequited lov, sad boi hrs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-22
Updated: 2020-01-22
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:21:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22364035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cars/pseuds/cars
Summary: Mark is 14 years old when it all goes to shit.“We’ve been getting strange reports,” says the lady on TV, “of something approaching the Golden Gate Bridge. A creature of some sort.”They call it a kaiju, three nuclear bombs later. Monster.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 3
Kudos: 42





	category 3

Mark is 14 years old when it all goes to shit. 

“We’ve been getting strange reports,” says the lady on TV, “of something approaching the Golden Gate Bridge. A creature of some sort.”

They call it a kaiju, three nuclear bombs later. Monster. 

One kaiju turns to two, to three, to four. The death toll hits ten thousand on the day of the first kaiju attack, and doesn’t stop. Mark’s family moves farther inland. 

His dad laughs when they announce the new Jaeger Program. 

“Do they really think their robots are going to stop the kaiju?”

They do. 

Five years later and Mark isn’t really sure how he ended up here, as a jaeger pilot. That’s a lie, of course. He knows how he ended up here. He was in love with Donghyuk three years ago and is still in love with Donghyuk now. Nobody had been surprised when Donghyuk had applied for the jaeger academy and Mark had followed, because that’s the sort of thing that seemed like a natural progression for best friends, childhood friends, conjoined-at-the-hip-since-Mark’s-little-chubby-fingers-had-snatched-a-crayon-from-Donghyuk’s-littler-chubby-fingers friends. 

Everyone knows how the saying goes, that the deeper the bond, the better the drift. Mark and Donghyuk have been tied together for so long their first drift is seamless, memories on memories on memories, 97% synch. Mark yearns for the remaining 3%. Their synch rate stays at 97% through their years at the academy, and it all culminates to one panic attack Mark has the night before their graduation, worry that all their simulator runs went to waste, that the countless hours they clocked in the Kwon Room were for nothing, that he isn’t good enough and one day Donghyuk will leave him. And of course Donghyuk is there to calm him down, because he’s an angel that Mark doesn’t deserve. Mark’s heart hurts, as it always does when Donghyuk is like this and his repressed emotions worm out of his heart and into his head, basketballs in an empty gym, loud and echoing, “I love you I love you I love you I love you”.

There’s no way Donghyuk doesn’t hear that, even through their barely there ghost drift, and he holds Mark tighter and says into his hair, “I love you too”.

Oh. Mark’s heart feels so light, for the first time in years.

Donghyuk holds Mark an arms length away and stares into his eyes. His hand feels so warm on the back of Mark’s neck. “I love you always. Brothers forever, right?”

Oh. The basketballs still. Mark collects every single last thought and slam dunks them back into his heart, deadbolts the door.

“Right?” Donghyuk is still staring intently into Mark’s eyes. Fuck, he can’t take this.

“Right.” His heart feels two times heavier but Donghyuk is still looking at him, with his soft eyes and soft smile now, so he smiles weakly back. He’ll take Donghyuk’s love, whatever he can get, even if it isn’t the kind he wants, because Donghyuk is more important than whatever stupid feelings Mark has been festering since years ago, since the first moment he met Donghyuk, maybe. 

A week later, their synch is at 95%. Mark knows it’s his fault.

Neotech Dream is beautiful, a mark 4 skeleton of metal and bolts and wire, and Donghyuk always denies he cried when they first saw it. (Mark always lets him have it, even though he felt it through the drift.)

Four battles, four kills. The magazines and talk shows call them rookie monsters. Donghyuk doesn’t like that name for them, screws up his face whenever he hears it on the radio, and Mark always wants to kiss his scrunched up nose when he does. He is always quick to repress those thoughts, because the ghost drift is stronger now, two years officially in the field, and sometimes he can’t tell where Donghyuk ends and he begins. 

(We’re not the monsters, the kaiju are the monsters, says Donghyuk everytime.)

Donghyuk keeps a photo of a gorgeous young woman on his bedside, her chest worn down from how Donghyuk presses two fingers to her chest and drags down every night before he goes to bed. Mark dreams of her sometimes, Donghyuk’s mind bleeding into his, drifting in their sleep. Mark hates this dream, this one Donghyuk will never stop having, one that never ends, Donghyuk’s mother flatlining again and again and again, Kaiju Blue toxins finally reaching her heart. Mark watches young Donghyuk cry in this dream, and Donghyuk watches himself cry in this dream, and the never ending drone of the heart monitor goes on and on.

Mark has this other dream, he had it once before and then repressed it down deep so that Donghyuk will never ever see it. It goes like this. Mark sits at a table with a swinging lightbulb above him. Across from him sits another him, another Mark. 

“You should tell him how you feel,” says other Mark.

“No.” says Mark, because Donghyuk can never know.

“That’s okay,” says other Mark, “he’ll never return your feelings anyways.”

And the table spins and spins and spins until Mark can’t tell himself from the other Mark. Then the table stops and Donghyuk is sitting across from him. 

“Mark,” and then sound stops coming out of Donghyuk’s mouth but his eyes are cold and mean and his mouth is curling into disgust and Mark shrivels and wakes up with his eyes wet.

Mark can always relax in the Kwon Room. The whole world just whittles down to him and Donghyuk, connected, spinning around each other, their sticks hitting against each other, more a dance than a fight, just Mark and Donghyuk, Donghyuk and Mark, weaving around each other. Mark wants to trap this moment in a snowglobe and live in it forever.

The alarms are blaring at 3 a.m. again. Mark wakes up to Donghyuk slapping his face.

“Category 3 kaiju detected off the coast of Hong Kong,” comes Taeyong’s voice over the speaker system. “Code name: Fanghead. Neotech Dream report for duty.”

Syncing has always been easy with Donghyuk, after so many times, and Mark revels in Taeyongs little pleased hum when the neural handshake holds steady quickly.

This drop didn’t seem any different than any of their others at first. Maybe it was because they’ve gotten a little cocky now, after their four kills, maybe a little too confident, but Mark and Donghyuk are ready to celebrate after a few heavy punches make Fanghead fly back into the ocean, Kaiju Blue spraying everywhere.

They react slow when Fanghead bursts out of the ocean, very not dead. It all goes downhill from there.

When Fanghead rips out their right arm, all Mark can hear is screaming. He doesn’t know if it’s his or Donghyuk’s but one look at Donghyuk hurts more than his aching socket. Donghyuk’s right shoulder is red red red, blood dripping all over his white drivesuit and the floor, teeth gritted in pain.

“Load...the canon...” is all Donghyuk can get out, his and Mark’s left arms raising in sync, the slow ticking of the plasma cannon readying on the display.

60%. 70%. 80%. Fanghead punches through the cockpit.

Time slows down just enough for pure unfiltered fear to drip down Mark’s spine, cold and wet.

90%.

But time is never kind, and resumes for Fanghead to rip Donghyuk out of the cockpit. And oh god. Oh god, does Mark feel it all. They’re still connected in this moment, and Mark feels it all. Fanghead stabbing through Donghyuk’s chest,

“I love you I love you I love you I love you,” says Mark’s useless brain. 

“I know,” says Donghyuk back, and Mark can feel him smile through the drift. And then Mark feels Donghyuck die. Fanghead crushing Donghyuk’s frail body in his palm like a twig. Ribcage, lungs, heart. Mark feels it all. 

100%.

It hurts. Donghyuk’s pain is Mark’s pain and Mark is dying twice over, once for Donghyuk and once for himself. Fanghead deserves to hurt too. Fanghead deserves to die. Mark yells and shoves the plasma cannon into Fanghead’s chest. One shot for their arm, one shot for Donghyuk, one shot because Fanghead deserves it. Mark stays there, blasting at Fanghead’s corpse until he runs out of shots. The adrenaline crashes and Mark with it.

Ten minutes later, a wrecked jaeger collapses on a Phillipenes beach, staining the sand black. The people nearby pull a boy from what’s left of the cockpit, drivesuit so stained it seemed red to begin with, barely alive.

Mark wakes up in the hospital and the vacancy in his head hurts, his own thoughts oppress him, so lonely after sharing his brain for the last four years. The doctors say that it was a miracle he managed to take the neural load meant for two people and managed to pilot the jaeger to shore. They call him a hero.

Half of Mark died with Donghyuk in the ocean. He wishes that he was dead too.

What was it that Donghyuk had said? “I know.” God, why had Mark ever thought he had hidden it well? Donghyuk was literally living in his brain, of course Donghyuk knew. Alone for the first time in a long while, Mark cries. 

Back in their dorm, the photo of the woman drifts slowly to the ground.

**Author's Note:**

> ahh thanks for reading! sorry the ending is so awkward i didnt know how to end it :(


End file.
